I mean, not long ago I was at a table with Jocelyn and Rachel and Poe.
Remember them?
Jocelyn is gone. Really gone.
Rachel moved away. For reasons I don’t know.
And Poe might as well have moved away.
Now I’m sitting at a table full of strangers and glancing at Kelsey as Dan and Georgia exchange dialogue that seems a little more on the hurtful side than playful.
“I never did ‘go out’ with Brady,” Georgia says.
I still can’t decide if Georgia is full of herself or not.
“You so went out with Brady, at least for a couple of weeks. He sure talked it up anyway.”
Dan, on the other hand, is totally full of himself. Full of that and a lot of other … stuff.
“What’s your definition of ‘going out’?”
Dan makes a face like he’s going to say something crude when I decide to change the subject.
“How long have you guys known each other?” I ask Kelsey and Georgia.
They both laugh, and I’m wondering how that can possibly be a funny question.
“Sorry,” Kelsey says. “Georgia and I used to not hang around with each other. It was really only at the end of sophomore year we became friends.”
“She thought I was a bit of a snot, and I can be, to be honest.” Georgia looks at Dan. “I have to be. At our school, the guys sometimes don’t get the point.”
“Are you going to be this way all night?”
“If I have to, yes.”
“We started hanging around after a party,” Kelsey continued. “Turns out we have more in common than we thought.”
“Just like Dan and me,” I say.
The girls laugh, and Dan looks at all of us, wondering what I said.
He’s already acting a bit more animated and out of it. I’m thinking that flask isn’t helping.
Maybe I can get a ride home with the ladies.
“So why’d you move down here?” Georgia asks.
I go into the story about my parents’ divorce, but I make it short and sweet. I don’t get into details about my dad finding God and my mom finding wine.
“But why Solitary?”
I can see Georgia’s point.
“We wanted to escape from civilization. It was this or somewhere in Alaska.”
They laugh again, and the more the girls laugh, the more comfortable I feel.
“I’d totally live in Alaska,” Dan says. “Hunt wild animals and live off the land.”
Georgia and Kelsey seem to be laughing with me and laughing at Dan.
“What?” Dan says. “I totally would.”
“Have you ever gone hunting in your life?”
“I’ve shot guns.”
“Yeah, I can totally see you gutting a deer,” Georgia says.
After a while of this, when we’re eating our meals, Dan seems to be bored with being abused by Georgia. He’s busy playing with his phone and texting or something. Georgia is picking at her salad, while Kelsey doesn’t seem too interested in her meal either.
“Not a fan of tacos?” I ask her.
“No—they’re fine.”
“You’re going to have a lot to bring home.”
She smiles in a way that I love. It’s a shy smile, a kind of unsure smile that’s nice to see when so many people in this world seem so sure of themselves. It’s a smile that I can’t remember seeing on many of the cute girls back home.
“Tweeting about what you’re eating tonight?” Georgia asks Dan.
“Telling everybody how my date with Georgia is going.”
“Dream on.”
“The night is young. Lots can happen.”
“If you noticed, we did drive separately. Chris, you’re certainly welcome to come with us to the party later.”
“Come on, that’s not even fair,” Dan says.
“Then mind your manners.”
“What do you think I’m—”
“That includes shutting that big flabby mouth of yours.”
Kelsey looks at me. Before I can get her to say something, she takes a bite to make sure she’s safe from sharing her thoughts.
Dan is the kind of guy who doesn’t talk with you but talks at you. I’m still not sure if he’s heard any of the things I’ve said to him, so I’ve basically stopped talking. But when we arrive at the party, I’m able to get away from my chauffeur and hopefully not see him anymore tonight.
I could say the same about Georgia, to be honest. I’m not really warming up to her either.
Kelsey, however—well, she’s a whole other matter.
The party is at the house of some senior. Lots of kids jammed into a small space with dim lights and loud music and lots of alcohol. Kelsey looks more lost than I probably do. After a half hour of wading through people and trying to talk to no avail, she suggests going outside.
It’s cold but not frigid. Winter’s gone, and the promise of spring is near. We walk past newcomers and get to the street.
“Do you mind?”
“What?” I ask.
“Just—staying out here? Getting away?”
“No.”
Kelsey walks in the center of the street, confident that nobody’s coming and if they do we can move to the side. For a while I just walk alongside her.
“Thanks for doing this,” she says.
“What?”
“Tonight.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Dan’s a real winner.”
“We’re bonded for life. I think I’ve heard more 50 Cent tonight than I’ve heard my entire life.”
“Sorry.”
“Please. It’s no big deal. It’s kinda humorous.”
“Do you like parties?”
“Do you?” I ask.
“No.”
“So why go?”
“That was Georgia’s idea. All of this—it was really her idea.”
“Yeah, I can tell she’s really crazy about him.”
“They’ve been that way forever. I could see her marrying him. Like after she has all these relationships with all these other guys, I can see her finally settling down for someone who’s crazy for her.”
“Seriously?”
Kelsey nods. “I’ve told her that, but she thinks I’m delirious. I don’t know. I just think it’s nice to know that someone out there likes you.”
There’s a long pause as we walk.
“Do you—do you miss her?”
The question slaps me on the back of the head. For a second I really question if it’s Kelsey who asked it. I don’t need to ask her who she’s talking about.
“Yeah.”
We keep walking. I know I probably should say something else, or just say something about anything, but I can’t.
She has no idea about the truth. She can’t. There’s no way she can know.
We get to a turn in the road, and Kelsey stops. I can’t see her eyes in the darkness.
“Do you think we’re all the same around here?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“That we’re all just a bunch of rednecks who don’t know anything.”
“Who said that?”
“I heard you say something like that to Gus.”
“When? Recently?”
“It was after a fight in the hallway. Just after you came.”
“You noticed me?”
Kelsey laughs. “All the girls noticed you. Who wouldn’t? The fact that you weren’t from around here just made you more interesting. Chicago, too. That was all everybody could talk about. The girls, that is. And then—then suddenly you were with her. Jocelyn. Of course nobody was surprised.”
I knew that people noticed us together, but I’d always assumed it was because Jocelyn was special, because she was chosen for something awful.
I never thought it had anything to do with me.
“The stuff I said to Gus—that was because he’s a moron. I don’t think that about the rest of the school.”
&n
bsp; “You sure?”
“Are you even trying to put yourself in his class?” I laugh. “Please.”
“I know. But—but Jocelyn wasn’t like the rest of us.”
“Hey, Kelsey, look—just—she’s not here, okay? So you don’t have to bring her up.”
“She’s kind of here. The same way she’s kind of in our art class. Or anywhere you go.”
I feel the goose bumps on my skin and know that this girl is right. Kelsey might look younger than she is, but she knows. She knows, and she’s right.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay, really,” she says. “I understand.”
We keep walking and see the lit-up house and hear the loud music. I know that this is one of those moments, and this time I act.
“Hey, hold on,” I tell her.
She pauses, and this time when I look down I can see her face and her glasses lit up by the moonlight. But mostly I just see those bold eyes looking back at me.
“Look, Kelsey—I just—there’s things that I can’t change. Like my being from Chicago. Good or bad. Or like—well, like anything. It’s just—I don’t know how to say this—but there’s a lot—”
Then a car comes toward us like a possessed horse galloping through the night. We move off the street, and the car screeches to a halt just beyond us.
The driver’s window opens, and I hear a familiar voice.
“Chris? Is that you?”
The voice belongs to Poe.
58. The Truth, Finally
The timing of this is really spectacularly not good.
“Poe?”
I can’t believe it’s really her. I wouldn’t know if that’s her car, because I don’t know anything about Poe, except for the fact that she’s been hating and ignoring me (Thousand Island incident excluded).
“Chris—I need to see you.”
It’s dark out, but not that dark. She can see that Kelsey is standing right next to me.
“Look—whatever I’m interrupting, I’m sorry—I don’t mean to. I just—we have to talk, and we have to talk now.”
“Kelsey—have you guys …”
“Hi, Poe,” she says, answering my question.
“Yeah, hi. Look, I’m really sorry, but—Chris, you have to come with me.”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s about Jocelyn.”
I glance at Kelsey. Like I said, the timing of this is really amazingly awful.
“We were just going back to the party—”
“No, no party. I swear, Chris, you gotta get in my car and right now. You might never see me again.”
“It’s okay,” Kelsey says.
I’m about to say something else, but I see her blond hair nodding over toward Poe.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her.
“It’s fine. Really.”
She walks away, and I see her silhouette lit up by the stark headlights of Poe’s car. This would be the moment I say “Enough” and follow Kelsey back into the party.
But of course I don’t.
Of course I go toward the car and climb in.
I have no idea where we’re headed.
But I know I have to go there.
We’re taking a curve a bit too quickly, and I grab onto the handle above the door.
“Why don’t you slow down?”
“I just want to find a place to talk.”
We’re in the middle of dark, desolate woods.
“Where, exactly, do you want to talk?”
“Nobody can be around.”
“Poe …”
She slams on the brakes and we skid, then she gets control and pulls off on the side of the road next to a hill and a mountain of forest. I can hear the deathly quiet outside through the crack in the window.
“What’s going on?”
She turns to me, and I can barely make out her face. But I think there are tears in her eyes.
“I know. I know about it. I finally get it.”
“What?”
“What happened to Jocelyn. Do you know?”
“Yeah.”
“What? Tell me. Tell me everything.”
“Why—why now? What happened?”
She breathes out, and her breath is shaky, heavy. “I’ve been writing back and forth to Jocelyn.”
“Letters?”
“No—emails. And texts. And I—I believed just like everybody else that she moved. Like Rachel. Except Rachel really did move. I’ve seen her and talked to her on Skype. She’s there. But Jocelyn—the emails I got from her were strange. Weird. Just saying how you broke her heart, how she can never love again after what you did to her, how you hurt her.”
“Hurt her? Hurt her how?”
Poe curses and shakes her head. “It’s utter crap. Those emails and whoever was writing them. I should have come to you. I know—you tried. But something—I know something happened. Those emails weren’t from her. I know that now.”
“How?”
“I wanted to see how’d she react, so I brought up Stuart. I said how much I missed him and how her leaving reminded me of when he disappeared. Then I asked her what she thought had happened to him. This was the bait. And she took it, and that’s when I knew—it wasn’t Jocelyn.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I made her once promise to never—ever—bring up Stuart’s name with me. So if I was bringing it up, certainly she’d ask me why. She knew what I thought about his disappearance. She would have said something, even if she was trying to be polite or honor her promise. But instead she said that Stuart and his family moved unexpectedly—but—and here’s the but—she’s heard from him. You know. Heard from him, just like I’m hearing from her.”
“Joss is dead.”
The words feel cruel coming out of my mouth, but I don’t know how else to share them.
“How do you know that?”
“I was there. I saw it.” My mouth feels dry, the words taste like chalk.
“You saw her die?”
I nod and feel the world begin to spin and start to feel that falling, flying sensation.
Grief and fear are real.
They’re real and they’re like some dangerous mixture you make in chemistry class.
They’re real and they taste bitter and they feel awful.
“What happened?”
So almost three months after the fact, I tell Poe. I tell her everything I can remember, and I can still remember everything.
I don’t know how much time passes, but when I’m finished I smell Poe’s perfume and feel her embrace and find myself holding back tears while holding on to her.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t let you tell me,” she says, over and over and over again.
For a long time we hold each other in the darkness of that small car. I can feel someone trembling but can’t tell which of us it is. Probably both.
She finally pulls away from me. Her swollen, hurting eyes latch on to mine.
“We have to do something.”
This isn’t like some great idea from Poe. This is like a declaration.
“I tried.”
I tell her about my conversation with the sheriff, with Staunch, with the others at the school. Then I tell her about Jared. She’s the only one I’ve told about him.
“Do you trust him?”
“I don’t know who to trust. Besides the puppy Jocelyn left for me.”
“You can trust me.”
I nod.
“Do you believe that?”
“I think so.”
“Chris—there’s—there’s a lot more I can say, but not tonight. Okay? I already—I already feel watched. I don’t think we should stay here.”
The night that surrounds us seems to blow in the breeze like dark blankets hanging on hooks. It’s like any second someone might come and pull them off their hangers and shine the big, bad, bright lights on us.
“There’s one other thing,” I say.
“What?”
“I discovered some emails that belonged to my uncle.”
I share them with her as she starts up the car.
“Listen,” she says. “This—we need to get help.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll figure it out. This can’t keep happening.”
“Just—just be careful who you tell.”
“I’m not telling a soul,” Poe says. “Not yet. Not until I get a plan.”
“And what do I do?”
“I think you keep doing what you’re doing. Nothing. For the moment. Because if they—whoever they are—if they think that you’re following orders, they might get lazy and forget to watch you. And that’s when we act.”
“Act how?”
“All roads lead to that freaky pastor. So that’s where we start.”
59. Oh Yeah
Later that night, after Poe drops me off and tells me there will be lots more time to talk and then hugs me again like a dear old friend, I’m in my bed and I remember.
Kelsey.
I didn’t even say good night.
If she knew, she’d understand. Of course, she’d also be packing her bags and moving to Southern California.
I think of this deep into the night. It’s too late to call. I’ve never emailed her before.
She must so totally hate me.
I wonder what happened to Dan the Man, but that only amuses me a bit. He probably forgot that he started the evening with me.
Things were going so well with the chips and the salsa and the party. So normal.
I almost started to believe that things could be normal.
But they never will be.
Ever.
I stay up thinking about Kelsey and Poe and Jocelyn and this town and its secrets.
60. In Between
The lady in black begins walking. I watch her disappear down the long hall and through the doorway.
“Jocelyn.”
My voice echoes all around. I get up and run past the ticket counter and then enter the square tube that seems to go on for miles.
She’s there, standing, waiting for me in the middle of the empty Jetway.
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